Saturday, November 1, 2008

Rubbish

I just read Tun Dr. Mahathir's latest snippets and he wrote about rubbish although definitely he did not write rubbish.

I went to Fukuoka, Japan in 2004 to study about rubbish. On my way back I stopped over at Kansai Airport to catch our own Malaysian Airlines (MAS) plane home. From Fukuoka to Kansai I flew All Nippon Airlines (ANA).

I flew business class and at the ANA business class lounge I met a University Islam Malaysia (UIM) lecturer who was returning from a seminar at Kobe. When he asked about me I told him I was returning home after having gone through a training about rubbish. So he said surely I learned about incinerators too. I consider this as a positive comment from a university lecturer and I was impressed. I told him definitely I learned about incinerators and visited a few of them around Fukuoka.

Then he mentioned about seeing a big building situated just in front of his hotel in Kobe. Every day he kept wondering what it was because it looked like a combinatiom between a casino and a big theater.

So just before checking out from his hotel he asked one of his Japanese hosts what building was that? The host replied that it is an incinerator. He was really surprised because an incinerator was the last thing in his mind about the building.

I told him about the incinerators I visited. Except for the tall chimneys I never thought that they were incinerators.

In Japan the authorities arrange regular visits by students to the incinerators. So the students can see what happens to their rubbish. But ask any student here what happens to his rubbish. We will receive multiple answers.

I hope with the formation of the National Solid Waste Authority our rubbish problems can be solved.